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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • To: if AT math.bu.edu
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org, david.l.steinberg AT rogers.com
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Early and late biblical Hebrew
  • Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:31:53 -0500 (EST)


Isaac Fried:

You wrote: “QNIZY may be a variant of KNISY כניסי from the root KNS כנס
'collect', the same way that PRIZI is from the root PRD, PRZ, PRC, PRS, PRT
פרש, פרד ,פרס, פרז, פרץ 'spread out'.”

Why would you think that QNZY and PRZY are west Semitic names? The QNZY and
PRZY are always presented as being foreigners. Genesis 15: 18-21 explicitly
states that the Hebrews will in due course become the dominant people of
Canaan, displacing 10 peoples, including the QNZY and the PRZY and the
Canaanites and the Amorites. The only native west Semitic speakers in
greater Canaan were the Canaanites and the Amorites. So the other 8 peoples
named must logically be non-west Semitic speakers.

Indeed, the classic -zi- or -zzi- formative in these two names in particular
has caused many scholars to recognize them as being Hurrian:

“[O]f all the ethnic terms found in these early [Biblical] traditions Kenizzi
comes closest to a Hurrian form…. With Kenizzi, Perizzi cf. a-ki-iz-zi king
of Qatna during Hurrian preponderance…and Perizzi, name of a Hurrian envoy in
an Amarna letter….” Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Gibeon and Israel” (1972), pp. 18
and 113. As further support for the view that the QNZY [“Kenizzites”] at
Genesis 15: 19 are Hurrians in Canaan, see also H.L. Ginsberg and B. Maisler,
“Semitised Hurrians in Syria and Palestine”, JPOS 14 (1984), pp. 258-9.

One of the major themes throughout the Hebrew Bible is how the Hebrews came
to displace the Hurrians as the dominant people in non-coastal Canaan. But
in order to see that major theme, we must do as pre-exilic Biblical authors
consistently did: recognize that the following six names at truly ancient
Genesis 15: 19-21 are all Hurrian: Qa-a-ni-ya/QYNY; Qa-ni-zi-ya/QNZY;
Xuti-ya/XTY; Piri-izzi-ya/PRZY; Gera-ge-$e-ya/GRGSY; and
A-bu-u-se-ya/YBWSY.

Because these are non-west Semitic names, it does not make sense to make a
creative west Semitic etymology of a non-west Semitic name.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois







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